Is it harder to be young today than in 1975? Nowadays, young people have more difficulties in accessing stable employment and housing, but they enjoy certain advantages compared to previous generations, deciphers a report published this Tuesday.
“Youth has lost its privileged position in the age hierarchy,” Clément Beaune, High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning, said at a press conference on Tuesday. This organization attached to Matignon publishes a report that compares the average living conditions of those who are 30 years old or younger today with those of half a century ago. Among the factors that currently fuel the “discontent” of young people: the “yield” of degrees, which has “eroded.”
Professional integration has become “more difficult” and forms of precarious employment “have developed” (CDD, temporary work). Thus, in 2023, among those under 25 years of age who work, only 43% have a stable job, compared to 75% in 1982. If in the time of the Trente Glorieuses, “we considered that the baccalaureate was the key to a career, with quick access to stable employment, today this is no longer the case,” explained Clément Beaune.
Access to housing “much more difficult”
In this context, access to housing and property has become “much more difficult,” the report indicates. Today, young people can still become homeowners, but “at the cost of a financial effort considerably greater than that of their parents.” The house price index, which relates these prices to household income, increased notably more than 70% between 1975 and 2025, according to the report. Thus, to acquire the same home, with the same rate of initial effort and the same personal contribution, theoretically 23 years of amortization would be needed in 2025, compared to only about ten years in 1975.
Today’s thirtysomethings, however, benefit from certain advantages compared to previous generations, the report clarifies. Since the mid-1970s, effective annual working hours in France have decreased by around 17% on average. Therefore, today’s young people enjoy more free time and have access to new goods and services. Furthermore, “the young people of 2025 will have on average a higher income than in 1975, even taking inflation into account. But the increase in salaries between the two dates, much lower than that of GDP per capita, is also lower than that experienced by older workers,” underlines the High Commissioner for Planning.
Source: BFM TV
